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A national campaign aimed at eliminating paid parking at hospitals has now reached Calgary. Winnipeg cancer patient Collin Bryce (Theo) Kennedy began circulating his petition at hospitals in Calgary in a bid to eradicate on-site parking fees for patients and caregivers. In the few short months since he started his petition in July, Kennedy has gathered more than 3,000 […]

By Randall Denley Smoking marijuana can impair one’s thought processes, but all the federal government needs to do is talk about it to achieve a state of surreal confusion. Consider the situation today. Marijuana is going to be legalized next year. Cool. In the meantime, illegal pot stores are proliferating across the country under the […]

On Tuesday, Calgary’s Juliet Guichon and Dr. Eric Wasylenko were among the handful of recipients recognized with an award from the Canadian Medical Association. Wasylenko, awarded for his work in medical ethics, talks to Herald health reporter Jamie Komarnicki about pressing issues in palliative care and a new challenge addressing health-care ethics in Canada’s prison population. This interview has been edited and condensed.

A single-shot vaccine used for toddlers across Canada doubles the risk of fever-induced seizures compared with using two separate vaccines, according to a University of Calgary study published Monday. While the findings may fuel anti-vaccination advocates, the lead researcher says being honest with their research can help prevent another measles outbreak.

A rural school bus crash near Calgary that injured nine children has prompted a call from the newly appointed head of the country’s medical association for more safety measures. Edmonton emergency physician and injury researcher Dr. Louis Francescutti, appointed in August as president of the Canadian Medical Association, said the government is putting the lives of children at risk by not mandating restraints on school buses.

Chronic exposure to air pollution causes nearly nine times as many premature deaths in Canada as traffic crashes, University of B.C. researchers say in an article published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

A commonly prescribed antibiotic can double the risk of kidney damage, according to a study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Researchers from Canada and the U.S. examined 10 years of health records from nearly 14,000 American men between the ages of 40 and 85. They found men who had taken fluoroquinolone antibiotics — ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and moxifloxacin — were twice as likely to end up in hospital with kidney damage.

Bulimia, anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders, long thought to be serious problems for many women, are showing up among surprisingly large numbers of men, some of whom are starving themselves or exercising obsessively to look like the pictures in men's magazines.

Kilogram for kilogram, babies eat more food, drink more liquids and breathe more air than adults, thereby taking in more toxins from their environment. Blood tests regularly show higher per-kilogram chemical loads in babies, but that falls as they age. Babies are more likely to be on the floor, putting objects in their mouths and ingesting more dust known to contain pollutants from household plastics, treated fabrics, sprays and deodorizers.

Arriving here from Sudan just over two years ago, Biniam Soquar was nursing a water-borne parasite that had plagued him with bloody diarrhea since childhood. But after landing as a refugee in Calgary in March 2010, he was able to access basic medical care immediately: prescription medication to treat the parasite, a new pair of glasses, even a long-overdue teeth-cleaning changed his world completely.

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